A sunny morning when we wake at Solre le Chateau, lots of motorhomes are leaving or have left, clearly here for the weekend and the fun of the fair. We breakfast and get on our way early, leaving Solre le Chateau on D962 through Sars Poteries to N4 and Maubeuge. At Maubeuge we take A649 a good road past Bavay all the way to Valenciennes. A23 takes us through Scarpe Escaut Regional Forest to Orchies and Lille. We stop on A25 at Aire Steenwerck on the Belgian border and have lunch. There is a toilet, complete with French-style open urinal, French men have no inhibitions, we frequently see cars stop, the driver jumps out and relieves himself in full view – not quite what we reserved Brits expect, but that seems to be the norm in France, what the women do remains a mystery, although I am not sure I want to know.

After lunch we complete our journey to Grande Synthe shopping centre at Dunkirk where we visit Auchan for another shopping marathon. We stock up with jambon, lomo, a selection of cheeses and some red wine.

Because the UK has left the EU we are now limited in the amount of wine and goods that we can bring back to England. At the time of writing the allowances are 16 litres of still wine plus 9 litres of fortified wine or sparkling wine, 24 bottles of wine plus 12 bottles of sparkling wine per person. We always have a dilemma when visiting wine producers for a degustation, how much can we buy? Wonderful wines can be purchased direct from the vintner at very reasonable prices, and cremant sparkling wines that are not readily available in England. The temptation is to buy a lot at each winery that we visit so we end up with too much. It’s always a delicate balance where we have to stop buying so that we are under the allowances. Part of the magic of being a wandering wine taster.

Finally A16 south to Calais and Camping Le Grand Gravelot where we park up for our last meal in France before returning to England tomorrow.